Tottenham's Cristian Romero has had a wasted round trip to South America after Argentina's request to overturn his suspension for tomorrow's match against Ecuador was dismissed by FIFA.
Romero was called up by Argentina last week, despite being suspended for both their World Cup qualifiers this month after September's game against Brazil was abandoned for not following international match protocols.
Romero served the first of his two-match ban for Friday's win over Venezuela but the Argentine FA (AFA) had hoped the centre-half would be able to feature in Ecuador in the early hours of Wednesday morning (UK time), pending an appeal.
However, FIFA confirmed on Monday that Romero remains suspended, along with team-mates Emiliano Buendia and Emiliano Martinez of Aston Villa, and Giovani Lo Celso, who is on loan from Spurs at Villarreal. That trio also joined up with the squad last week and are now in the same predicament.
Romero has now returned to London and is expected to resume training with Spurs on Tuesday.
Back in September, the Premier League quartet travelled to Sao Paolo to face Brazil, allegedly in breach of the country's Covid regulations at the time, which barred arrivals from the UK who were not Brazilian citizens or permanent residents.
Spurs were frustrated by the AFA's decision to select Romero this month, particularly as Argentina had already qualified for the Qatar World Cup, but the club was powerless to prevent him from travelling.
The situation is the latest difficulty the club has faced over international call-ups of their South American players this season.
Romero was sidelined for nearly three months after suffering a hamstring injury on Argentina duty in November, while after the September break he, Davinson Sanchez and Lo Celso missed two Spurs matches while training in Croatia to avoid being forced into quarantine on returning to the UK.
